Review of Ready Player One
*** 1/2 out of five stars
Currently in theaters
“Shall we play a game?” — Joshua, the AI, in WarGames (1983)
by Walter G. Tarrow
Ready Player One from Steven Spielberg is The Goonies (1985) for gamers (as a reminder, Spielberg wrote the story for that movie). A virtual reality (VR) video game waxed nostalgic for children of the 80s or for those, like myself, who were born much too soon for the tech revolution of today.
I too suffer from the 21st century malaise of FOMO. Social media and cyberspace have created open ended worlds of endless possibilities and countless relationships. Sadly, in that universe, family, friends and neighbors, albeit global, that were once three dimensional, have been reduced to but two dimensions online.
Deep personal human connection and meaningful discourse have been reduced to clicks, emojis, memes and opinionated thoughtless tweets. And overwhelming it all is a fear of missing out. Perhaps reliance upon the appeal of a picture being worth a thousand words, and a video being worth a billion, we have lost the desire to ruminate, to contemplate, to consider. Can we really be rational, thoughtful, compassionate through a video screen?
Ready Player One, written by the film’s co-screenwriter Ernest Cline, is a dystopian sci-fi novel appealing to the Hunger Games crowd. Its dismal world of 2045 is a nightmare of corporate and political oligarchy, with the masses trapped in trailer park “stacks” where the only refuge is a VR Oasis of 1980s video game and movie nostalgia, a pining for the bright and color saturated hopes of a communistic paradise where any player can be anyone, anything, any avatar, of their choosing, and superhuman fantastical upgrades can be won. That Oasis was created by a game developer who himself was a shy, fearful, child of the 80s who found solace in his world of games and movies. When he dies, he wills the Oasis to the one player who succeeds in winning the game.
Cline’s screenplay downplays the sociopolitical observations and intrigue, and character development, of his novel, and, under the direction of crowd pleaser Spielberg, becomes instead another thrill ride. Visual delights, endless pop culture references and frantic gameplay sequences command the screen, often as controlled chaos.
Criticism may be, and has been, levied against the film as without substance, superficial and trite, but no one goes to Walt Disney World to discover the meaning of life. This is a movie having fun with gaming, Easter eggs, and in jokes where Chucky becomes a weapon upgrade and the Iron Giant is a Jaeger.
Bottom line is, if you “got” the references in the previous sentence, you will probably have an enjoyable ride. If you don’t know Chucky, and Jaeger seems to be missing the Meister, then you’ll wonder what the hell is wrong with these kids today.